ok at the
smoke rising from the wick. I'll hold a bit of lighted paper in the
smoke, so as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle
lights again. So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through
the wick is turned into vapor; and the vapor burns. The heat of the
burning vapor keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too
within the flame, and turned into vapor, and burnt, and so on till the
was is all used up, and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you
see, is the last of the candle, and the candle seems to go through the
flame into nothing--although it doesn't, but goes into several things,
and isn't it curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle
should look so splendid and glorious in going away?"

"How well he remembers, doesn't he?" observed Mrs. Wilkinson.

"I dare say," proceeded Harry, "that the flame of the candle looks
flat to you; but if we were to put a lamp glass over it, so as
to shelter it from the draught, you would see it is round,--round
sideways and running up to a peak. It is drawn up by the hot air; you
know that hot air always rises, and that is the way smoke is taken up
the chimney. What should you think was in the middle of the flame?"

"I should say fire," replied Uncle Bagges.

"Oh, no! The flame is hollow. The bright flame we see is something
no thicker than a thin peel, or skin; and it doesn't touch the wick.
Inside of it is the vapor I told you of just now. If you put one end
of a bent pipe into the middle of the flame, and let the other end of
the pipe dip into a bottle, the vapor or gas from the candle will mix
with the air there; and if you set fire to the mixture of gas from the
candle and air in the bottle, it would go off with a bang."

"I wish you'd do that, Harry," said Master Tom, the younger brother of
the juvenile lecturer.

"I want the proper things," answered Harry. "Well, uncle, the flame
of the candle is a little shining case, with gas in the inside of it,
and air on the outside, so that the case of flame is between the air
and the gas. The gas keeps going into the flame to burn, and when the
candle burns properly, none of it ever passes out through the flame;
and none of the air ever gets in through the flame to the gas. The
greatest heat of the candle is in this skin, or peel, or case of
flame."

"Case of flame!" repeated Mr. Bagges. "Live and learn. I should have
thought a candle-flame was as thick as my poor old noddle."

"I